Obamacare is already strangling small medical practices

The creeping illness of Socialism is beginning to take effect, and, as always, it is the people, and small businesses that get it hardest, and first! The Lonely Conservative has more

Obamacare hasn’t yet been fully implemented but it’s already driving up the cost of health care and killing small medical practices. At the same time, it’s helping big hospitals become even bigger.

Thomas Lewandowski, a Wisconsin heart doctor, was faced with a dilemma after his Medicare payments were cut and his overhead costs soared: Fire half his staff to keep his practice open, or sell it to a local hospital.

He decided to sell, becoming one of more than 6,000 employees at Thedacare, which runs five hospitals and numerous clinics in northeast Wisconsin. It’s a decision being made increasingly in the U.S., creating a new dynamic that threatens to raise the price of health care, even as the federal government and states strain to keep a lid on costs.

Under Medicare’s tangled payment system, hospitals get higher reimbursements than individual doctors for cardiology treatment, as they do for other specialty services, in some cases as much as three times more. At the same time, the added bargaining power gained by controlling more of the heart care in a geographic market has given large hospital systems added leverage in negotiating reimbursements from insurers, such as UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH) and WellPoint Inc. (WLP)

One cardiologist said the people who concocted these payments schemes need to have their heads examined. He also said his previous plan to work well into his retirement years has been scrapped.

For cardiologists, the move to hospitals has good and bad aspects, according to Lewandowski, the Wisconsin heart doctor who sold his practice in 2010. While they may gain more stable incomes, doctors often have less freedom over how they care for their patients under strict hospital protocols. Some doctors are also under pressure to see more patients each day when they are employed by a hospital, he said.

“I miss being in private practice and being my own boss,” said Alexander, the Illinois cardiologist. “I would have said 30 years ago that I planned on dying with my boots on, and practicing until I couldn’t practice anymore.

‘‘Now, do I look forward to retirement?’’ he asked. ‘‘Yes. Do I plan on working forever? No.’’

Go read it all. As I noted, it is the very people Socialists claim to be helping that are crushed first. The small businesses go under the wheels too of course. The LOnely Conservative links Timothy Carney, who explains how this works

Again, here we go, down the road that Socialism paves. The Road that leads to broken promises, human suffering, and greatly diminished liberty, and choice? Soon that will be gone too. Unless you call being herded into one massive hospital, or another massive hospital. And, of course, the poor will be hardest hit there too, once the IRS starts enforcing that mandate that we MUST buy health care. So, they will be the first to be herded won’t they? And, as more and more of us join them, the system will go broke, and then what?